Posted on July 20, 2011 12:29
Categories: Medicare
Topics: Medicare | Providers | Rates/Reimbursement
On June 14, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report projecting various cost estimates for plans to avoid a scheduled 29.4 percent Medicare physician reimbursement rate reduction on January 1, 2012. The CBO estimates that freezing rates at their current level and allowing a 34 percent cut to occur in 2013 would cost $22 billion over 10 years. The authors estimate that 2 percent increases each year through 2021 would cost $388 billion.
From the report:
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that, under current law, payment rates for physician services will be reduced by 29.4 percent in 2012. That large reduction called for under current law follows several years of legislative action to either maintain or increase physician payment rates under the Medicare program when those rates were otherwise scheduled to decrease under the provisions of law known as Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) mechanism. Such legislative actions have overridden the SGR.
Full Report: Medicare’s Payments to Physicians: The Budgetary Impact of Alternative Policies (PDF | 127 KB)
Congressional Budget Office. (2011). Medicare's payments to physicians: the budgetary impact of alternative policies.
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